If there’s one lesson coming from this year’s presidential campaign, it’s beware of the religious nutjobs you have lining up on your side. <\/p>\n
For John McCain, there’s been the, ah, cognitive dissonance between his 2000 accusation of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell being “agents of intolerance<\/a>” and his uncritical, more open courting of the Religious Right<\/a> this time around<\/a> — which has led to further conflicts as he accepted (even courted), then had to tepidly distance himself (“just because they support me doesn’t mean I support all their positions”) from , support by folks like John Hagee<\/a> (anti-gay, anti-Islam, anti-Catholic, whose endorsement McCain was “very proud” to get) and Ron Parsley<\/a> (McCain’s “spiritual guide” and holy warrior against Islam)<\/p>\n On Barack Obama’s side, we have the Louis Farrakhan thing<\/a> (though Obama never actually sought out Farrakhan’s support, and quickly quickly repudiated<\/a> Farrakhan’s anti-semitism and racism), and, tied into that, the Jeremiah Wright<\/a> thing (which Obama has also quickly repudiated<\/a>).<\/p>\n I’m not aware offhand if there are any religious nuts supporting Hillary Clinton, but if she gets the nomination, I’m sure someone will dig some up.<\/p>\n I’ll confess that in the above analysis, I am cutting Obama more slack than McCain. Part of that may be my partisanship. But part of it is that McCain has actively sought the support of religious nuts, and failed to directly address what aspects (if any) of their worldview he rejects, while Obama has not sought such support, and has been directly forthcoming in rejecting positions of hatred and divisiveness. Throw in that McCain has gone from iconoclast to brown-noser, and I definitely have to give Obama the “win” in this particular kerfuffle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If there’s one lesson coming from this year’s presidential campaign, it’s beware of the religious nutjobs you have lining up on your side. For John McCain, there’s been the, ah,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54,27,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008","category-religion","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5446,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/10\/money_finds_a_w.html","url_meta":{"origin":12594,"position":0},"title":"Money finds a way","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Mar-04 8:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"Because, remember: campaign finance law will make politics more transparent, more accountable, and less costly. Riiiiight. Led by veterans of presidential and congressional campaigns, a coalition of Democratic Party interest...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12804,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/24\/suspending_the_campain_as.html","url_meta":{"origin":12594,"position":1},"title":"Suspending the campain as campaigning by other means","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 24-Sep-08 1:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's indeed a shame that, in the midst of both a presidential campaign and a major financial\/economic crisis, that one's mind immediately starts looking to ascribe political motivations to...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13952,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/02\/27\/behind-closed-doors.html","url_meta":{"origin":12594,"position":2},"title":"Behind closed doors","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 27-Feb-09 8:46pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I suspect the folks most surprised by this next study will be those who should be least surprised. A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states. When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Media & Culture","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12329,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/05\/28\/nooooooooooooooo.html","url_meta":{"origin":12594,"position":3},"title":"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 28-May-08 12:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama, Clinton, McCain Join Forces To Form Nightmare Ticket\u00a0 WASHINGTON\u2014Presidential hopefuls John McCain (R-AZ), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) announced Monday their plans to form what many Beltway...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31353,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/13\/the-end-of-the-religious-right.html","url_meta":{"origin":12594,"position":4},"title":"The End of the Religious Right?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-Nov-12 11:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"Stop me if you've heard this one before ...The End of the Religious Right has been bandied about ever since it came to prominence in the 80s. \u00a0Every setback is hopefully presented as the End (or at least the Beginning of the End). \u00a0And every time, 2 or 4 years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51279,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/27\/identity-vs-practice-in-anti-discrimination-laws.html","url_meta":{"origin":12594,"position":5},"title":"Identity vs Practice in anti-discrimination laws","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 27-May-15 5:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Bush's argument here is that gays should (grudgingly) not be discriminated against for their identity, but that it is okay to discriminate against their practice (in wanting to be married), both in terms of the law forbidding it or letting folk legally refuse services that are even peripherally related to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}